King vs. dungeness: those crabs are killers

With the premiere Tuesday night of Season Five of the white-knuckle reality show, Deadliest Catch, which documents the crab fleet fishing the dangerous Bering Sea out of Dutch Harbour, Alaska, comes this nugget of information from my colleague, Stephen Hume, who knows a thing or two about resource industries and what it’s like to ply one’s trade in the wilds.

A report by Jennifer Lincoln for the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that while the fatality rate for commercial fishermen in Alaska is 1.07 per 10,000 fishermen, the fatality rate for commercial fishermen in waters off California, Oregon and Washington is 2.38 per 10,000 — which makes fishing there more than twice as dangerous as it is in the Bering Straits, dramatic though the TV images are. Turns out fishing for Dungeness crab is way more hazardous than fishing for Alaska king crab.

When I checked her findings against the statistics for B.C. waters compiled by Work Safe B.C. I was surprised to find that things are even grimmer here. The death rate for commercial fishermen in B.C. each year averages 5.3 per 8,500 fishermen, which makes it about five times more hazardous fishing off the B.C. coast than fishing in Alaska. Half those deaths occur when boats capsize or founder and the crews drown or die of hypothermia.

Something to think about, and be grateful for, the next time you dip a crab morsel into a bowl of melted butter, or the next time you find yourself grousing about your boring landlocked job.